Snapchat: If Your Nude Snapchat Photos Get Leaked, It's Not Our Fault
"Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our ToU," the startup's Twitter account wrote. "We can confirm that Snapchat's servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks."
Although Snapchat has been hacked before, this time it doesn't seem to be the company's fault - at least not directly. Third party apps, such as SnapSave or SnapKeep, seem to be the source of the hacking. These apps let recipients of Snapchat messages save them permanently.
In an emailed statement to Business Insider, Snapchat says it has tried to get many of these types of apps taken down:
"We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed."
Even if you don't have one of these services downloaded on your phone, your nude selfies may be compromised. It doesn't matter if the sender is a SnapSave user; it only matters if the recipient is one.
When you use a service like SnapSave or SnapKeep, the sender pushes a photo or video like normal on Snapchat. But instead of opening the message in Snapchat, the recipient opens (and potentially saves it) in the third party app.
The leaked photos may drop on October 12 on community boards like 4Chan. The problem is, most of Snapchat's users are between the ages of 12 and 17, which potentially means a lot of photos of underage children are about to leak online.
For more on the Snappening, read: Hackers Access At Least 100,000 Snapchat Photos And Prepare To Leak Them, Including Underage Nude Pictures